Miss Ghana is ‘An Escort Agency’ – Three Former winners speak out

play videoMs Inna Patty has been accused of exploiting ladies who participate in the pageant for her own gains

Inna Patty, the current owner of Miss Ghana’s franchise holding company, Exclusive Events Ghana looked into the eyes of Stephanie Karikari, Miss Ghana 2010 in public and said she was too ugly and therefore unfit to be on the same billboard with the then Miss World, Stephanie Karikari has recounted the soul-crushing incident to GhanaCelebrities.Com.

It wasn’t just words; Inna Patty actually made sure it happened.

That’s nothing in the grand scheme of how Inna Patty assaults, abuses, exploits and pimps out the young women her organisation crowns Miss Ghana each year to preying men, in return for sponsorship deals and monies, three former Beauty Queens have said.

Miss Ghana has for many years been boiling in controversies which the Beauty Queens who have received some of the worst treatments in the hands of Inna Patty have failed to publicly speak about—because of fear of what Inna Patty, described as “Manipulative” by Miss Ghana 2015, Antoinette Delali Kemavor would do to them.

On the back of reports that Miss Ghana 2017, Margaret Dery, has also found herself in the same horrendous, perhaps abusive situation, GhanaCelebrities.Com has spoken to three previous winners of Miss Ghana who have shared the shocking and horrible ordeals they were put through by Inna Patty and her Exclusive Events Ghana.

This is to serve as the long overdue warning from the horses own mouths to all reasonable persons interested in ever becoming Miss Ghana Beauty Queens and also to corporate Ghana to re-evaluate their sponsorship relationship with Inna Patty and her Exclusive Events Ghana company.

In a total of about 3 hours’ conversation, Miss Ghana 2010-Stephanie Karikari, Miss Ghana 2015-Antoinette Delali Kemavor and Miss Ghana 2013-Giuseppina Nana Akua Baafi have all mastered courage to speak about the different layers of exploitation, verbal and sometimes physical abuses and the sort of sexual baits they were used for by Inna Patty.

From what GhanaCelebrities.Com has been told, Inna and her company seem to be running a glorified escort agency masquerading around as a beauty pageant. And the experiences of these young women were not unique; they all suffered the same revolting and inappropriate treatments in the hands of a woman who fits the description of a shrewd “Machiavelli”.

For the first time, we’ve heard Antoinette Delali Kemavor narrate how Inna Patty told her expressly to be “SWEET” and “ACCEPTABLE” of whatever a man they were seeking sponsorship from would demand of her—and that was immediately before she took her to have a late night dinner at this man’s residence in Nungua, Accra.

At the dinner, when Antoinette Delali Kemavor seemed to be getting on well with the man, Inna Patty was said to be happy. And when Delali Kemavor stated that she was tired and therefore wanted to know when they would leave, she said; the man told her, he thought “she was sleeping over.”

Delali Kemavor honestly believes that the conversation Inna Patty had with her immediately before the dinner and the man stating that he thought she was sleeping over only points to the fact that, Inna had probably arranged with the man that she would spend the night at his place unknown to her.

It wasn’t just Delali Kemavor who said she was asked by Inna Patty, a woman supposed to protect these young Queens to be sweet to men. Stephanie Karikari also mentioned how at the age of 19, a year after she was transferred to Exclusive Events Ghana as the reigning Miss Ghana, Inna asked her to visit a successful businessman to seek for a sponsorship deal for Miss Ghana—adding that, she should be “nice to the man” to obtain the money.

“The Inna Patty I know wouldn’t explicitly tell any of the Miss Ghana winners to go and have sex with a man for money but she will subtly make you aware that this is what you have to do,” one of the three Beauty Queens said.

According to all the three Beauty Queens, they were asked via a contract they signed after winning the competition to raise 10,000 GHS each month for Exclusive Events Ghana and Inna said how they obtained that money was not her problem. But she would mostly send them out to offices of men to ask for monies.

When one of the Queens asked how she was going to raise that much money each month, Inna Patty told her she is a woman and she is doing it, so she should also be able to do it as a woman—she exclusively told GhanaCelebrities.Com.

‘Why would any Ghanaian businessman give you 10,000 GHS each month for 12 months for even two months? Yet, Inna expected that I obtain this for her. When I challenged her offer to give me 30% of whatever money raised and she taking 70%, she unwillingly accepted that she would take 30% and I would take the 70% as I had to go out there and find this money,’ Stephanie Karikari said.

Asked about what the money was to be used for, all the Queens said the money went straight to Inna Patty under the disguise that it would be used for their Miss Ghana projects.

Apart from their monthly unfeasible duty to raise 10,000 GHS, Delali Kemavor spoke about how Inna asked her to raise an extra 10,000 dollars to pay for her Miss World registration fee, despite she finding out from other African contestants that the fee was actually 5,000 dollars.

In any case, why must a winner of Miss Ghana be the one to go about asking mostly men for 10,000 dollars to pay for her registration fee for Miss World? Delali Kemavor said; ‘I struggled to raise this amount and I only was able to obtain 5,000 dollars from a politician [name withheld]. No one was ready to just hand out 10,000 dollars to me for nothing.’ But Inna pressured her to make it happen.

For Giuseppina Nana Akua Baafi, Inna Patty is a complete fraud who did not only take advantage of her innocence but actually embezzled the monies she was able to solicit from corporate Ghana.

Giuseppina said she was actually the best fundraiser of her time. And that she was asked to bring in 10,000 GHS a month, just like other Queens. She was told the funds raised would be used for a project in Northern Ghana but after bringing in the cash, Inna would give her 1000 GHS and take the rest—and the project was never built.

Baafi further told GhanaCelebrities.Com that, Inna Patty asked her to pay 10,000 euros as a registration fee for Miss World. She then told Inna she would rather stay in Ghana than to go out there begging for such a cash from anyone.

According to Baafi, Inna called her at odd hours, as late as 11pm to attend strange meetings which she always declined–this contributed to the breakdown of whatever working relationship they initially had.

Unlike Stephanie Karikari who was able to compel Inna Patty to agree to a 70-30 share of whatever money she was to bring in a month, Baafi had a 20-80 percentage share with Inna–and even that, she said Inna always dishonoured their agreements.

Why funds raised from corporate Ghana for the Miss Ghana Foundation or its projects were being shared this way, with Inna Patty taking almost all and not putting received funds towards projects as mentioned by the former Beauty Queens indicates the deep rot the organisation dwells in, made possible by the obvious lack of accountability and external supervision.

Giuseppina Nana Akua Baafi captured it as; Miss Ghana is a family business, and that’s the problem. In fact, Inna once told me that every member of her family is a director of the company that owns the franchise. All they seek is to make profits, by coercing winners into engaging in unpleasant funds solicitation by whatever way possible.

On Miss World, the three Queens all stated emphatically that Inna Patty incessantly threatened that if they expressed any concerns publicly or disobeyed her orders irrespective of the orders were, she would do all within her means to make it impossible for them to attend the world event.

In the case of Baafi, she seized her passport which contained a visa for Miss World for 3 months, making it impossible for her to attend. She only got back her passport after several reports to the police that Inna was keeping her passport without her consent, she told GhanaCelebrities.Com.

Perhaps it was good that Miss Baafi did not attend the Miss World competition, because Miss Karikari said, describing her Miss World experience under Inna Patty and Exclusive Events Ghana as appalling is generous–it was the worst experience of her life.

Miss Karikari recollected how Inna Patty bought for her £1 earrings to wear for the big competition from Primark—a vivid indication that she didn’t really care about her outlook when other Queens from other countries were properly and glamorously styled.

Beyond the shared repugnant experiences of these Miss Ghana Beauty Queens, every reasonable person in Ghana would agree that, asking young vulnerable women to move from one office to another begging for 10,000 dollars or 10,000 GHS each month in a country where “men at the top” are extensively sexually exploitative clearly suggests one thing—which is, money has always been placed ahead of the interest of these young girls by those requiring them to do so.

It does not matter how many years this has been done in Ghana. It’s unacceptable, perhaps intentional, to demand that girls as young as 18 years raise huge funds which are never used for even the intended purposes—in an environment that guarantees sexual harassment.

Personally, I do not find the signing of two contracts with different detailing innocuous. The Beauty Queens said, at the beginning of the competition at the stage of the first 20 contestants, they are always made to a sign a first contract which contains the duties of an eventual winner. Once you become a winner, you sign a second contract—which requires you to raise huge sums by whatever means for shame projects and also to cater for your own expenses to Miss World, the ultimate destination.

If a young woman is made aware from the onset that, she would have to bring in 10,000 GHS each month, and fully fund her trip to Miss World including paying for her own costume and flight, which sane person would bother with Miss Ghana? I believe it’s this fact that the organisers seek to circumvent by keeping that information away from the young girls in an unfair after-win contract.

I also found it weird, albeit laughable that, Inna would make deductions from the prize money a Beauty Queen has won when the Queen does not do exactly what she wants—to the extent that the deductions would be more than the existing credit and the Queen would end up owing Inna Patty money as it happened to Giuseppina Nana Akua Baafi. Why must a prize someone has already won, be subjected to further conditions and deductions which she was not made aware of as part of the rules of engagement?

You cannot undermine the struggles and difficulties Inna Patty and her team annually go through for Miss Ghana to take place. But that does not in any way justify the unpardonable and probably illegal tricks they play on these young girls—and the sort of “pimping”, abuse and exploitation they put these vulnerable young women through.

If you have 3, 4 or 5 former Beauty Queens all speaking unpleasant of an individual or an organisation that accorded them such honour, then the plausible position is, all these women cannot be the problem, rather, that one person or organisation which is “a constant variable” in the equation.